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Episode 163: Land of the Marvel Zombies

This week Black Panther faces the return of the cosmic Marvel Zombies who want to eat other universes and a CORTEZ, but really, we’re here for some NEXTWAVE style Machine Man destroying all the zombies.

The Cosmic Zombies Iron Man, Giant Man, Hulk, Wolverine, Spider-Man and Luke Cage have now been joined by Gladiator, Thanos, Firelord and Jean Grey and have reached the edge of the universe where tempers are running high which leads to Hulk killing Thanos. Giant Man remembers they’d tried to make a machine to leave the universe and decide to head back while Spider-man feels like the hunger is leaving him.

Meanwhile on Earth, T’challa’s grandson K’shamba finds Hawkeyes head and brings it back to New Wakanda where Forge is warning T’challa and his wife, Lisa, a former Acolyte who we know and learn nothing about. Forge is worried that the children of Cortez will turn their back on him for a cult to Magneto.

Janet, who was a zombies who now is a head on a robot body returns with Reynolds who had Forge like powers and they report about losing the hunger and show Hawkeye also no longer hungers so they fix him up with another robot body.

On the way back the zombies eat Ego the Living Planet.

Meanwhile Malcolm Cortez wants to be the new ruler and so at night he sends in an assassin who brutally disembowels Tchalla with a knife so Janet bites him to save him and goes after Lisa next but T’challa stops her and they feast on the assassin.

T’challa and Janet go into solitary and Malcolm plans to take over, mentions how Forge’s daughter married T’challa’s son and so Forge has to be careful and at night, after making Malcolm think he was giving up, moves with Reynolds and Hawkeye to free them. But Malcolm captured Lisa and Kshamba and tries to start an uprising but after a lot of dumb mopey scenes, the cosmic zombies are back.They initially want to start a breeding program but Spider-man has enough and attacks the other zombies giving the humans time to mostly escape and Reynolds throws up an energy shield but unfortunately Gladiator and the top half of Luke Cage are inside. Tchalla, Spider-man and Luke Cage fight back taking a lot of damage until Forge shows up in old school Iron Man armor and finishes him off. This pisses off Tony so the Zombies head to the baxter building to try and find the portal but end up dealing with the defenses.

Meanwhile Forge and Reynolds work to patch the zombies and Malcolm is angry, Reynolds and Janet kiss and then when they explain why the zombies returned, Forge reveals he stole it. Knowing the zombies will be back, Reynolds revealed he put the dead Colonel America’s brain into T’challa’s son, T’channa, who now only speaks in Colonel America quotes.

After calming Tchalla down the zombies return and they work to trick the zombies by briefly dropping the shields and then restarting them leaving only Iron Man inside the base where he runs into Colonel America and Forge.

Outside Hank smushes Tchalla and Janet and inside zombie Bruce Banner attacks Reynolds and turns off the shields letting the other zombies in. Giant Man goes to eat Lisa until he realizes the hunger is gone and he gets the other zombies to stop too.

Malcolm is angry when they ask for peace and rightfully is like “you all should pay for your multiple genocides” and Giant Man argues “you don’t know what it was like. But then hungry Hulk bursts in so they make peace to fight him. Phoenix gets killed and then Hawkeye and Firelord and Ironman really fast. And then Reynolds sacrifices himself and Hulk turns back to Banner, asks for death and is killed. So they work to rebuild, find Janet’s zombie head and decide to work on the portal. Malcolm reveals to the zombies that he kept the portal from working so he could take over (which somehow Forge never noticed missing parts), he killed T’channa, teleports the zombies away and then knocks out Forge who was like – what have you done! and that’s mostly the end!

In the swamps of Citrusville in Florida, the Initiative team, The Command – consisting of The Aquarian, The Conquistador, Jennifer Kale and Siege respond to a distress call when they are set upon by zombies who bit and infect The Conquistador and Siege and then zombie Deadpool shows up, blocks Kale’s magic, bites the Aquarian and so the Aquarian pushes Deadpool into a speedboat turbine. He’s able to fight the infection and they call for backup only for Siege to return but his cyborg parts recognize he is sick and destroy his flesh.

Meanwhile in ARMOR the Alternate Reality Monitoring and Operational Response Agency, Morbius the Living Vampire meets with Portal, Charles Little Sky, a former Avengers side character who is the leader of ARMOR and who has teleportation powers. He calls in Aaron Stack, the Machine Man, fresh out of the Brian Reed Ms. Marvel run, into the secret ARMOR base to help.

They recognized the zombies found a way into the universe and the only solution is to find human blood from that universe. Machine Man doesn’t want to until he sees Jocasta who he doesn’t want to go in alone. Charles puts on his Darkhawk armor to get them in and drops them off and we see back in the base, the real Morbius from this universe is being drugged and the other Morbius is a zombie in disguise which is why they had that one Funko pop of him as a zombie.

So Machine Man and Jocasta are dropped off with eight hours on the clock and this is presumably some time after the initial Marvel zombies series. The two androids have a lot of baggage and they are attacked by zombies of Angel, Vulture, Beak (who can fly in this universe) and Falcon) who they kill.

We then see Kingpin has an operation here where people bring in canned food and get access to the pens. He is visited by the zombie Inhumans which the androids use as a time to sneak in and find out the pins are the feeding pins where Kingpin is breeding clones to eat. The two stumble into Vanessa Fisk, Kingpin’s still human wife (which is why he asks for food). When the cosmic zombies left the first time, Kingpin stepped in because he had the will needed. They are able to get a blood sample and the pair leave to run but Machine Man recognizes the cloned humans to be like him, like a robot, and sends Jocasta with the sample as he goes to fuck some zombie shit up, killing a bunch of zombies including Stilt-Man, but taking damage until he runs into Doctor Strange and Kingpin. Kingpin explains he can only cast two spells – one to summon manna and the other to see into another world which is how they got their plan – they will infect the initiative and then the rest of the world with a fake vaccine that zombie Morbius is working on.

Machine Man tries to call and warn Armor but Wanda is using Vision to block the signal so Machine Man steals Ghost Rider’s bike and takes off before exploding it.

And then back at Armor, an agent finds the real Morbius, he infects her, she infects another agent and everything starts to break down.

Jocasta meets with Little Sky and leaves and we see a ruined Machine Man, stuck and alone.

Black Bolt and Fisk meet as a hunt for Machine Man goes on but as Jocasta and Little Sky return they find Morbius and his zombie army have infected. Jocasta is asked to lock down the teleporters – the only way in or out – and on the way runs into Captain Mexica where the Aztec Empire never fell.

Meanwhile the zombies that hunted Machine Man found his corpse but it was a hologram trap and he kills them, takes zombie Lockjaw and pops back in killing the dead agents and Lockjaw. Zombie Morbius pops up and the real Morbius stakes him in the heart, Machine Man kills Captain Mexica and then declares his greatness (and stops calling himself Aaron.) He and Jocasta share a kiss, on the zombie world Black Bolt realizes they are screwed and Kingpin finally eats Vanessa. And Director Little Sky sends the androids home, and has Morbius work on a new team – the Midnight Sons.